AWS: Amazon web outage breaks vacuums and doorbells | Hacker News Reader

AWS: Amazon web outage breaks vacuums and doorbells

bbc.com

66 pointskissiel22 comments

And this is one of the reasons I'm wary of all these IoT linkings. We see it in cars, vacuum cleaners, fridges, doorbells and thermostats. Some folks see it as a way to market new items and increase functionality, I see it as a vector of malware and the opportunity to hold items hostage until a fee (subscription or update fee) is paid.

Smart devices are marketed as Stephen Hawking smart when in reality they are more of a Machiavellian smart. A conniving smart.

This is why I don't want IoT. Most new robot-vacuums can't even run the schedule if they are disconnected. But even if they can you sure as hell can't change it if the service goes down (or turns off).

I want to know that sparing physical issues, the products I buy will keep working. Not because the vendor decided that it is no longer worth supporting. I purposely bought a couple-generation old vacuum for this reason.

This outage should sever a wake up call for how useless your "smart" devices will be in a couple of years when the company decides that keeping them working is no longer worth it.

The inability for air-gaped devices to catch malware is a nice added benefit.

> The inability for air-gaped devices to catch malware is a nice added benefit.

As they say, "S" in "IoT" stands for "security".

And the “smart” in “smart home” too often stands for “someone might also root this”.

Stunned that a Ring doorbell doesn't have a fallback mode that at least "Rings" the bell. I wonder if that's a deliberate design, or some oversight/side-effect that happened after V1.

It does. You can hard-wire a Ring doorbell to a standard transformer and door chime and it works just fine.

Ah, so "Ring" doesn't come with a wireless bell/annunciator? I wasn't aware of how they worked.

They have one but it sucks. It’s always disconnecting. I have mine hardwired and 90% of the time the doorbell doesn’t ring and neither does the chime. Honestly I think rings are garbage. I’ll probably move to a nest or maybe just go back to a standard doorbell.

Ah yes, the Internet of broken Things :)

OK, I get the doorbell thing, video recording and all that. But vacuums? What on Earth could vaccum do with AWS? Calculate the summary length of your vacuuming sessions as a percentage of distance to the Moon? Have a customized ringtones (or should it be sucktones?) for the engine? Have a dance pattern so you could waltz with it if you pat $49.95? Seriously, what does a vacuum do with AWS?

Probably robotic vacuums ala Roomba.

Even for robotic ones - what exactly they need from AWS? They should have all the info needed for them right in them already.

From TFA:

> Roombas can be used without an internet connection, by pushing a button on the device.

> But connected services are used to keep it within a specific room and to remotely activate or schedule cleaning, which is how many owners use the robot.

Why would such a device need to be connected to a network at all, never mind the internet or AWS in particular? A user’s floor is typically contained entirely within their home.

Is there an app shoehorned into the product just to spy on users? Seems like it’s usually that with modern connected crap.

From the user reports its seems like the vacuums function just fine locally but the app to control and schedule them is cloud connected.

It’s probably robot vacuums. They need to sync schedules, map the room, log their status and location so you can see which areas were cleaned, update themselves, etc,

Certain models can be flashed with open source firmware that can make them run locally. But just as with every other consumer electronic device, the number of people who care about privacy, data control, or even just reliability and fault tolerance is small enough that no companies build products for them.

Yesterday it was smart their smart plugs, I had just put up my Xmas lights and decided to control them using a smart plug from an outlet in my crawlspace.

I spent half the day crawling down there and pressing the button to connect them before finding a reddit thread showing that several other people were having same issue.

Around midnight the plugs were back online.

Ironically, some Xiaomi vacuum robots are possibly the only cloud-free vacuums, once you root them and install Valetudo:

https://github.com/Hypfer/Valetudo#readme

Most from Eufy are cloud free (and even local network free).

During the outage today, my Alexa’s were streaming music. When I said, “Alexa”, they went right into reporting that there was an issue. I couldn’t even issue an “Alexa, stop”. Seemed.... dumb.

heroku connected to amazon, it is also affected.

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